Nitroalkanes are an essential stabilizing ingredient employed in 1,1,1-trichloroethane when it is used in vapor degreasing and cold cleaning. All manufacturers throughout the world add nitromethane and/or nitroethane to their commercial 1,1,1,-trichloroethane-based solvents. Normally nitro-paraffins are manufactured by a vapor phase nitration of the alkane with either nitric acid or NO.sub.2. There is a mixture of products formed due to carbon-carbon scission. Thus, for example, when propane is nitrated, the products include 1-nitropropane, 2-nitropropane, nitroethane and nitromethane. Because of the oxidative conditions other oxygen containing compounds are also produced, eg. aldehydes, acids and carbon oxides.
It would be advantageous to have a process which provided a purer product and was less extravagant in its use of energy than the known vapor phase process.
It has now been found that an alpha-bromoalkanoic acid can be reacted with an alkali metal nitrite in the presence of the magnesium ion in an aprotic solvent to form a chelate which upon treatment with a mineral acid yields a nitroalkane of one less carbon atom than the reactant bromoacid.